World War One tales at Holloway venue

Cotton Grass Theatre will be performing The Unreturning Army on Saturday, November 22, from 7.30pm, at Holloway’s Florence Nightingale Memorial Hall.

The Unreturning Army, by David Fredrickson, is a performance of words, music and poetry, which looks at the impact of the First World War on the villages of the Derbyshire Dales and the people who lived there.

How did they live through an upheaval that lasted four long years and changed the world forever?

Ordinary people like Horace Johnson, born in Youlgrave, who fought at Gallipoli, who never spoke about his experiences until he was persuaded to write about it at the end of his life.

And Vera Britain from Buxton, whose life at Oxford University was interrupted by the war, a conflict that robbed her of a fiancé and a brother.

It is the story of the men of the Notts and Derbyshire Regiment – the Sherwood Foresters – which so many Peak District men joined in 1914.

It is a moving story of love, loss, patriotism and great bravery, told with music, reminiscences and the poets of the War.